Not according to a recent Fox News investigation, “Assault-weapons ban no guarantee mass shootings would decrease, data shows.” The report concludes, “Data published earlier this year showed that while the [Clinton assault] ban was in place, from 1994 to 2004, the number of mass shootings actually rose slightly during that period. Add to that the fact that most gun crimes in America are committed with handguns… [and] as the NRA points out, only a ‘tiny fraction’ of crimes involve assault weapons no matter how it’s measured.”

Examiner.com elaborated, “Crime statistics compiled by a Northeastern University professor, the Census Bureau, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel show that in the 10 years before the Clinton gun ban, there were 173 mass shootings with 766 victims. But during the 10 years of the ban, from 1995-2004, there were 182 mass shootings with 820 victims.”

Even in the U.K. when the Firearms Amendment of 1997 completely banned handguns from private citizens – which was prompted by a school massacre – handgun crime doubled over the next decade, according to British government crime reports. That is why U.K. citizens warn Americans in this video, “Don’t let them take your guns!”

If one wants to see the ineffectiveness of countrywide gun bans and increased firearm government regulations, one doesn’t have to look any further than Mexico.

Sylvia Longmire, a former Air Force officer and special agent, and former senior border security analyst for the State of California, recently concluded the investigation, “Mexico Proves Strict Gun Laws Won’t Prevent Massacres.”

Longmire explained, “Contrary to popular belief, Mexico’s constitution has its own version of our Second Amendment. However, few private citizens own firearms. Federal laws have severely restricted the ability to own and carry weapons to soldiers, police, trained bodyguards and a few others who can make it through the miles-long gauntlet of the application process. If a Mexican citizen can survive the background checks, the mountains of paperwork, the half-dozen required personal recommendations and the expense, they are limited to buying guns with low stopping power. [And] There is also only one gun shop in Mexico where they can legally purchase firearms, and it’s in Mexico City – not exactly a close drive for many Mexicans.”

And we don’t think, given enough time, the same thing could happen to our Second Amendment rights, being slowly strangled by the overreaching, bureaucratic tentacles of Washington, D.C.?

As with most of societies’ ills, the key to curbing violent crime is not more government expansion and spending. Neither is the answer dissolving our Second Amendment rights – countries with super strict gun ownership laws have equally violent crimes and proven taking guns from good guys doesn’t prohibit bad guys from obtaining them.

As Sylvia Longmire noted, despite the Mexican government’s gun bans and increased firearm regulations on its citizens, “More than 53,000 people have been murdered in Mexico in the last six years – most of them by a variety of pistols, rifles, and assault weapons owned by Mexican drug cartels.”

Ninety-nine percent of American gun owners are law-abiding citizens, and there’s no reason to penalize all of them because of the insanity of a few. Even Sen. Jim Kerry, D-Mass., confessed to Outdoor Life magazine some years ago, “My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam. I don’t own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a communist Chinese assault rifle.”

And if made illegal, how would Washington go about rounding up the millions of assault rifles in the U.S., including Sen. Kerry’s communist Chinese weapon?

Slate proposed, “The most effective way for the government to reduce the existing gun stock would be to buy them back from their owners. When Australia imposed strict gun control measures in 1996 in the aftermath of a mass shooting, the Aussie government bought back 643,726 newly illegal rifles and shotguns at market value. The gun buyback program, which cost an estimated $400 million in U.S. dollars, was funded by a temporary 1 percent income tax levy.”

Slate asked, “Would such a plan fly in America? Extrapolating from Australia’s numbers, a similar buyback in this more gun-laden country would cost billions.”

Just what we need: more new taxes, more national debt and more government restrictions keeping law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves!

Despite all the preceding evidence, President Obama announced on Jan. 16, 2013, that a new and tougher assault-weapons ban and a 10-round limit on magazines would be a part of his comprehensive plan to reduce gun violence (a.k.a., limit our Second Amendment rights), including 23 steps without congressional consent. Immediately after the president spoke, he signed nearly two-dozen actions increasing government firearm regulations via presidential executive orders!

Though many U.S. representatives and at least three states so far (Oregon, Texas and Mississippi) have vowed not to enforce new gun laws and stop Obama’s assault against our Second Amendment rights, citizens should be very leery of an administration which has already skirted around Congress and overreached the American people more than any in U.S. history.

And if we think we might get a little constitutional assistance from the U.S. Supreme Court, let’s neither forget how the Court ruled on Obamacare nor what Justice Ruth Ginsberg – appointed by former President Bill Clinton – stated last January during an interview on the Arab-language broadcast network Al-Hayat TV: “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa,” which incidentally has a bill of rights that is 10 times the length of ours but without one word protecting individual rights to bear arms.

Justice Ginsberg concluded the interview by asking, “Why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world?”

My friend and NRA executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, put it well on his blog this past year, “Imagine if one of the five justices who sided with the Second Amendment in the Heller or McDonald cases were to retire in the next four years. The likelihood of that happening is good, and we know that Barack Obama would replace him or her with a nominee who believes, just like Justice Ginsburg, that you and I don’t actually have the right to keep and bear arms.”

I want violent crimes curbed as much as anyone, but not at the expense of our Second Amendment rights – which are there to protect us. And it’s double-trouble lunacy when gun bans have already proven ineffective to reduce crime in many other countries!

When our Founding Fathers secured our rights to bear arms, they didn’t do so in order that we might go duck hunting. They did it so that we could defend ourselves. And that right was enacted into constitutional law and was never to be encroached upon by anyone at any time, especially those in Washington.

Could 27 words be any clearer?! “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

What don’t they get about the words, “shall not be infringed”?

Thomas Jefferson explained, “A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

But then again, maybe infringing and restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners, too, is exactly the ulterior motive behind the White House’s present gun and ammunition ban.

And why would this administration do that?

George Mason, delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention and co-father of the Bill of Rights, along with James Madison, gave the answer way back in 1788 in his speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, where he explained, “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

If that’s the case, then even more apropos is the brevity of Charlton Heston: “I have only five words for you: from my cold dead hands!”

(Next week, I’ve decided to add a Part 3 to this series, in which I will discuss how America’s founders and a few present-day organizations are fighting to reduce violent crime from the inside out.)

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